


Spillikin

by Ceallaigh



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ben Solo the Force Apostate, Canon Compliant, Celebrate the Waking, F/M, Kylo Ren Redemption, Kylo Ren in Exile, Maluhiaverse, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Reylo - Freeform, Reylo Fanfiction Anthology, TFA - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 10:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12130218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceallaigh/pseuds/Ceallaigh
Summary: “Forgiving yourself doesn’t mean you have to forget what happened, Ben,” his mother said. “It just means you can finally let go and move forward.”





	Spillikin

**Author's Note:**

> _Spillikin: A splinter of wood used to light lanterns and lamps._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> "...I figured it out, and...and I'm okay. And give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now. You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong...the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me."  
> \---Buffy Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Ben Solo awoke with a gasp. Whatever had formed his nightmare was already receding back into the folds of his mind, and he wasn’t quite sure what had left his heart pounding and his breath hitched in his chest. Unbidden memories of what he had done and what he had seen were grotesque, unwanted visitors at night. While they weren’t nearly as frequent as they had been immediately following the end of the war, they still always managed to wrest him from sleep with a start.

Instinctively he wrapped his arm tighter around his lover who slept spooned against him, their feet tangled together to the point where it was hard to tell where she stopped and he ended. Naked and warm from their lovemaking the night before, Rey continued to doze, her hair splayed across the pillow, her scent a comforting presence that surrounded him. Ben waited for his heart to slow and the anxiety to recede before he leaned in and gently kissed the sweet spot behind her ear. In return, she wordlessly mumbled, briefly stirring before slipping back to the silence of sleep.

He didn’t need a chrono to know what time it was. Enough years of living in the little stone cottage in exile, and he didn’t need anything reminding him that the sun was about to rise.

It was supposed to be the final punishment for his multitude of war crimes. The Republic was too evolved to embrace a capital sentence, and they had feared no prison could hold the Master of the Knights of Ren no matter how penitent he had become. So they had shipped him to the farthest point from the Core as they could find, an uninhabited planet of Maluhia that few knew even existed in the uncharted Mihi system far into the Unknown Regions of space. It was his prison, and he knew it would be where he took his last breath.

The island where they had settled him was just one more layer of redundancy. Without a ship to leave Maluhia or even a boat to traverse the endless waters of the lake that reached the horizon in every direction, the rocky shores were meant to contain him in ways no durasteel bars or escape-proof cell ever could.

It didn’t matter, because for the first time in his life he felt like he was home.

From enemy to jailer, then eventually from friend to lover, Rey--and their relationship for that matter--had never been simple. She’d been the only person other than his mother to visit him while he was imprisoned during his trial, and she was one of few that had the security clearance to know the coordinates to locate Maluhia. Rey had been the one tasked with transporting him to exile, and had been trusted to deliver supplies quarterly. After all, she was the only one who had the abilities to subdue him if he ever attempted to escape, and she had been the one the Republic had trusted to put down the rabid dog if the need arose.

But that day never came, and Ben never found that urge to escape. While the Republic had trusted her to be his warden and executioner, he had found the only person in the entire galaxy who could truly understand him and the battle he had fought daily to find that precarious balance between the Dark and Light sides of the Force. She understood it all too well, for that war waged within her as well, and she had emerged victorious.

At first her visits had been quarterly, and Ben had marked the changing of seasons with her return when she’d coming bearing ration bars, dry goods, fresh fruit, reading material, and soap during her brief stays on Maluhia. But somewhere along the line, her days on the island had started to outnumber her days off world.  

The island may have been his prison and his stone cottage his cell, but it was on Maluhia that he had finally found a semblance of peace. His mind was quiet, and the years of anger and hatred had finally slipped away. In a way, the Republic had gotten what it had wanted. Somewhere along the line Kylo Ren had finally died. And for the first time in his adult life, Ben Solo had been allowed to finally live. He wasn’t sure exactly when he started thinking of himself as Ben instead on the name Snoke had given him, but that was who he was on the island without a mask or layers of billowing black to hide behind.

He had Rey to thank for that, he mused to himself before leaning in for a second stolen kiss.

As much as he wanted to linger and share a languid morning in bed with her, Ben knew he needed to get up. There was too much to do that day, and he needed to get an early start. Reluctantly he untangled himself from her and slowly got out of bed. The room was chilly, and the air was cold against his bare skin. He definitely needed to get up and start a fire in the hearth. Rey still had desert blood coursing through her veins, and she hated to be cold.

His reconstructed knee--one of the parting gifts of his final battle--creaked as he rose to a stand, and he picked up his sleep pants from the floor before heading toward his dresser. He tossed them into the waiting hamper and quickly dressed in the dark. It was early spring, and he opted for layers including a thick sweater and woolen socks. He’d be spending the next day cycle outside, and he didn’t want to give in to the cold.

“What time is it?” Rey sleepily called from their bed. Despite his best efforts, he’d still managed to wake her.

Ben crossed the room and leaned down to kiss her. “Go back to sleep,” he gently urged. “It’s still early”

Clearly she had not been fully awake, and she nodded and lay back down without any argument. He tucked the quilt around her before heading downstairs.

The house was still. It was what he cherished most about Maluhia. He’d come from such a hard and loud existence that he’d never known a true sense of quiet until he was the only person on a planet. He loved this time of day, those hushed and darkened moments before dawn. Even the island seemed like it was still sleeping. But the sky threatened to wake with the first muted glow of sunrise. It was so near that he could feel it.

He headed to the fresher and turned on the overhead light. After emptying his bladder, he quickly washed his hands and face, lathering up with some frilly bar of milled soap that smelled like flowers and honey that Rey had brought back from her latest journey to the Core. She was always returning with scented shampoos and fizzing bath foams. He’d never thought of soap as a decadent luxury. But then again, he hadn’t been raised on a barren rock of a planet covered in sand where one of the currencies was measured in liters of potable water.

Ben quickly went through his morning routine. After scrubbing his teeth, he grabbed the hairbrush from the top of the sink and pulled it a few times through his tangle of hair. It had grown past his shoulders. One horrible attempt at cutting it himself later, and Rey’s even worse try at fixing it, he’d decided to let it grow out. Since then, she’d actually learned to cut his hair. In fact, she was quite good at it. But the long hair suited him, she had declared a year back, and he had let it grow.

After the worst of the snarls were combed out, he unwound the elastic tie from the brush’s hilt, gathered up his hair, twisted it into a messy knot on the back of his head and secured it in place with the tie. Maybe it was time to get it cut after all, he thought to himself. It was starting to get so long that it was a nuisance more than anything.

By the time he exited the fresher, the sky was awash with the reds and purples of dawn. The front room was no longer dark, and he could hear the birds chirping in the trees outside. He had no plans to eat breakfast, but Rey would be ravenous when she woke up. Grabbing the porridge grains from the cupboard, he measured out a portion and added it to the grain cooker in the corner of the counter. Next came the water and some of the dried candleberries he had picked from the clearing a few clicks from the house the season before. Rey loved her porridge far sweeter than he did, and he was sure to double the amount of gava syrup that he mixed into the pot. Finally he set the cooker’s timer so that the sweet concoction would be ready to eat about the time she usually rose for the morning.

When that was done, he added a few logs to the remaining embers in the hearth. The house had a fully functional solar furnace, but he preferred the comforting glow of a fire that the furnace could not provide. 

Ben waited for the flames to emerge before he prepared to leave for the day.  Once the fire filled the hearth, he stepped into his boots, pulled his winter coat on, and slung the rucksack he’d packed the night before over his shoulder before he headed outside. His woolen cap was already tucked into its pocket. Spring had come to Maluhia, but it was still early in the season. A thick layer of frost covered the pump house, and he would be lucky if the temperature rose to five standard degrees for the day. If it warmed beyond that, he’d take the coat off. But there was much to do before the sun went down, and he was only wasting time debating the weather with himself.

His axe was waiting for him, leaning against the pump house where he’d left it the day before. The plasma saw was still tucked away in the small shed he’d built. There were downed trees on the beach, knocked over by the lake’s impressive ice shove that had come ashore during the winter that needed to be cut up and made into firewood.

As he retrieved the saw from the shed, he couldn’t help snicker at the memory of the drama that had unfolded when he had requested the simple implement. It was too close to a weapon, someone on his disciplinary council had apparently complained. It was too much like a lightsaber, what with its arc of energy that could cut through poor defenseless wood. Obviously no one on the war council had ever hefted a lightsaber. One was an extension of a warrior. The other was a crude tool that made logs more manageable to split with an axe. When everything was said and done, it had been nearly a year between his request for the tool and when Rey had carried one off the Falcon for him.

Ben let out an irritated sigh at the memory and kicked the door to the shed shut with his foot. It slammed a little louder than he had wanted it to. It wasn’t the way he wanted to start the morning. The day was supposed to be marked with solemn reflection, not annoyance at trivial decisions made at by a tribunal light years away in the Core.

It was Galactic Remembrance Day, one of the few days he actually marked each year. It had originally been a day to remember those who perished in the Alderaani cataclysm, and it was a day his mother had noted with the reverence it  deserved. Somewhere in his childhood other survivors of the Civil War had claimed it as well as a day to remember all of the war dead.

It was a day that held powerful significance for him. It marked the fourth year he remembered his own father slaughtered by his own misguided hand, his third on the island. This year it was remarkably more solemn for him, for it was the first year he would honor his mother’s death. Her unexpected passing had gutted him shortly after the winter solstice, and now that spring was at hand and he marked another year on Maluhia with yet another Remembrance Day. Ben Solo grabbed the axe in his free hand, headed for the lake, and started his day.

He would honor his parents like the surviving Alderaani honored their dead—with fasting and a vigil. But he would also honor his parents with the sweat of his brow and the blisters that would inevitably form on his hands as he prepared for it all. There was no way he could change the past, but he still felt the need to mark the day with penance.

The sun was up by the time he reached the rocky beach, its first rays sparkling on the surface of the lake. Three large maples were down and littered the beach. It would take more than a day to cut and haul them up to the house, but Ben knew he would make enough headway to have enough wood to build a fire that would last through the night and illuminate the darkest part of his vigil.

He set his pack and axe on the ground beside one of the fallen trees and fired up the plasma saw. Its red beam cut through the logs with little effort, and it didn’t take long to partition the first two trees into log-size segments. It was the splitting that would take the rest of the day. That would be the back-breaking labor that would test the limits of his fast.

He’d learned several seasons ago that if he forgot to wear work gloves while he split wood, his hands would be torn to bloody ribbons by the end of the day. Once he was finished with the saw, he shrugged out of his coat, set it on the tree he had not cut up, and retrieved his work gloves from their pocket.

It didn’t take long to fall into a rhythm splitting logs. There was something comforting about the repetition of hefting the axe over his head and plunging it into a waiting hunk of wood. Minutes turned into hours, and time slipped away until his hands ached and his muscles burned. His hair was damp, and sweat collected in the small of his back. Ben didn’t stop until he was too tired to continue and his body demanded a break.

Out of breath, he leaned back on the fallen tree and shook the hair from his eyes. His stomach growled in angry protest, and there was nothing more than he wanted than a drink of water.  But that wasn’t part of the plans, and he would go without until his fast ended the next day.

“I thought you were only going to cut up what you needed for tonight,” Rey said as she emerged from the path with a water bottle in her hand.

Ben looked at the mountain of split wood and the scattered logs around him and smiled. “Guess I got carried away,” he said, still trying to catch his breath. He never did anything half way, and sometimes the extremes got away from him. Some habits were hard to break.

“Less I have to cut later,” he added. “What time is it?”

He never carried a chrono, but she usually did. Rey shrugged and answered, “Didn’t look. It’s early afternoon.”

He nodded as he got up from the log. “Good, I still have time to rebuild the cairn.”

“The what?”

“Remember the stacked rocks over there?” he answered, pointing to the to the flat boulder on the south edge of the small bay.

Rey nodded before asked. “The pile you built for your da. Where did it go?”

“The ice shove scattered the stones,” he replied. “I need to rebuild it.”

Rey frowned as if she had a thought forming on the tip of her tongue. After a moment she said, “If the ice is going to wreck it again, why are you going to build it in the same place?”

Ben sighed. On one hand, she was right. It was an exercise in futility. Sure, he could build a cairn that would last until the beginning of winter. But once the ice pushed ashore like it always did during the planet’s shortest days, the rocks would scatter again, and he would be back to square one in the spring.

He headed toward the lip of the bay and grabbed a large flat stone on his way to where he’d built the cairn before. “Because remembering those you love needs to be an active process,” he tried to explain. “And if it falls down, I’ll just have to build another.”

He saw the yearly destruction as a reminder of how he’d destroyed everything at one point in his life. What Rey saw as an inconvenience from poor planning, he saw as penance. No matter how many times he tried to fix it, it would never be enough. But he needed to keep trying year after year.

Rey followed him down the beach and called out to him, “At least let me help. What types of rocks do you need?”

Ben turned to face her and held his hands apart to show the diameter he was looking for. “No bigger than this,” he explained. “The flat ones work best.”

This was supposed to be one of his solitary tasks, but in all honesty, he appreciated the company. Rey always managed to keep the ugliest of his demons at bay. Perhaps it was her optimism. More likely it was her stubborn tenacity. If she said she was going to help him, it would take more than the Order’s Fifth Fleet to keep her away.

Slowly he started his stack, picking and choosing from the rocks Rey brought him. Some would fit together nicely as if they were meant to stack perfectly. Others he discarded because they simply did not feel right. Eventually the cairn grew until it was over a half-meter high, about the same size as the one he had built the spring before.

“It looks nice,” Rey said as Ben leaned back and took a brief break.

He nodded and acknowledged the compliment. But instead of stopping, he turned his attention to creating a second base. His father wasn’t alone anymore, and his mother deserved a similar memorial.

“My mother once said that someone is never really gone as long as we keep their memory alive,” Ben said fitted stones together. “I think in her own way, she managed to keep the entire planet of Alderaan alive until the day she died.”

“I guess that’s what I’m doing,” he added. “I’m keeping their memories alive.”

By the time he was done stacking the stones, his hair had come loose from the knot he had quickly

wound it into on the back of his head. A tendril stuck to the side of his sweaty face. He watched as his breath danced in front of him, and he was pretty sure there was steam rising from his head as he headed back to the fallen tree to sit down. He was hot, and he ached everywhere after hefting stone after stone to form the twin cairns.

Rey moved closer and sat down next to him. She unscrewed the cap to her metal water bottle and offered him a drink, but he shook his head and waved her off. “Against the fast,” he explained, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I can’t, but thanks.”

“Even water?” she asked.

There was no denying he was thirsty, but he smiled at her kind gesture before answering, “Even that. Nothing until sunrise tomorrow.”

Perhaps someday he would explain the reasons to mark Remembrance Day the way he did—fasting to remind himself that the day was not about seeking his own wants and needs, but rather to focus on honoring those who have gone before him, purification to cleanse himself of his past transgressions so that his actions would be pure of heart and untainted by his past sins, the vigil to keep the memories of those he cherished alive and to guide them on their journey to the world beyond.

His mother had marked the day every year with the same solemn duty that he hoped to somehow emulate. He hadn’t been much taller than his father’s knee when his mother had taken him by the hand and led him into the Alderaani temple on Chandrila for the first time. He didn’t have to fast back then. That wasn’t for children, he could still hear his mother say. They were too young to fast while their parents strove to remember  _ The Disaster _ as she and other Alderaani had called the destruction of their planet.

But he still could recall dressing in a white linen tunic that went to his feet as he accompanied his mother into the temple’s sacred baths to purify their minds and bodies before they joined the vigil. The water was still but cold, he recalled, but his mother was always waiting with a warm towel and a change of clothes to dry him off on the other side of the pool after they crossed to the other side.

As a child, he didn’t completely understand why his mother marked Remembrance Day the way she did. But now at thirty-four, Ben began to understand.  _ The Disaster _ was something she had never really discussed with him when he was young. His mother was Force sensitive, but had never considered herself a user of its power. As he looked out at the gentle waves lapping the shore, he finally understood why she needed to fast and cleanse herself each year.

She had felt the planet and all of its inhabitants die.

The remembrance and its formal rituals were not just a way of honoring the dead. The day also had served, in its own way, as a desperate attempt to wash away the pain and assuage the guilt that she had carried with her, that she couldn’t do anything to stop the destruction yet somehow survived while everyone she had loved had perished in the blink of an eye.

Ben understood the shockwave that followed the destruction of a planet. There was no question the wave of fear and anguish that had briefly crashed through him as Hosnian Prime had been vaporized was painfully awful. But the void that had emerged where billions of lives had been was something that was even worse.

Yet that emptiness didn’t even compare to the vacuum that had been created when each of his parents had died—one at his own hand, the other from a stroke he’d been told after the fact. Both of their lives had ended far too soon, each destroyed in one way or another by his own misguided decisions.

It was a burden he would likely carry with him for the rest of his life. And it was because of those decisions that he needed to honor them and mark each Remembrance Day with his own penitence. It wasn’t Rey’s burden to carry. It was his, not just on this day, but every day until he took his last breath.

“Hey,” Rey gently called, drawing him from his reverie. “A credit for your thoughts.” He could feel her asking for permission to enter his thoughts, but thankfully she didn’t press the issue and retreated when he didn’t answer.

Ben let out a sigh and scratched at his nose. “Just thinking,” was all he was willing to admit.

No sense sulking, he silently told himself. It would only make her pry more. So, he turned his attention to the jumbled mess of firewood that littered the beach. Suddenly restless, he crouched and started to stack the wood together.

Rey shifted on the log and slowly lifted a leg over it until she was straddling the downed tree.

“Meditate with me,” she offered with a small smile.

Ben grabbed three more of the split logs and carried them over to the growing stack. He offered a sad smile before answering, “You know I don’t do that anymore.”

But Rey was more stubborn than he was. She didn’t back down and added, “All the more reason to join me.”

“I thought we agreed not to argue about this,” he said as that oh-so-familiar jitteriness of fight or flight crept into the pit of his stomach. A nervous smile crept across his face that he was sure was more a baring of teeth than anything, a warning.

He wasn’t ready for her to cross that line. He’d walked away from the Force after he had surrendered to the Resistance, and he had doubled down on that desire as the tribunal had commuted his death sentence to a life of solitary exile. Rey had unequivocally respected his decision, but now her invitation to simply meditate made him feel anxious like a cornered animal.

“I’m not arguing with you,” she said gently answered. “I’m just inviting you to join me.”

He ignored her for a moment and started to add wood to the next row in the stack. A childish lack of a response, yes. But it was still a better option than snapping back which he knew would happen next if he didn’t bite his tongue. The years of exile had helped to bury the anger he had carried with him for over a decade, but it had done nothing to stop that acid tongue of his—something he inherited from his mother. There were times it served him well, but this blossoming argument was not one of them.

“Ben…”

His mood darkened and he could feel the irritation start to slip into his voice. “Sorry,  _ cyar’ika _ ,” he interrupted. His fists clenched, and he took a deep breath as he contemplated how he would finish his answer. “I’m going to pass on the meditation.”

But Rey was a persistent thorn in his side. It was one of the reasons why he loved her so. She never backed down when she knew she was right, when she knew she could make a difference.

She kicked her leg around the tree trunk and pulled herself to a stand. Taking a step or two, she closed the distance between them until they were standing toe to toe and were nearly touching. “How long are you going to pretend that the Force doesn’t exist?” she asked.

Ben didn’t answer. Instead he turned his attention to the wood and loaded four more pieces into his arms and silently walked over to the neatly stacked pile. One by one, he lay them beside each other to complete a row.

She didn’t follow him and watched as he busied himself around her. “Ignore the Force all you want, Ben,” she said.  “But did you know that every time you have a nightmare, you reach out in your sleep to find me in the Force? It doesn’t matter if I’m here or on Coruscant. You reach out, and I answer. Because that’s how the Force works.”

He felt his ears flush. Luckily, they were hidden beneath his hair, and that was always a telltale sign that he was embarrassed or scared.

He wanted to lash out. He wanted take her bait and argue with her and push her away like he did with everyone that had ever crossed that line. He wanted to bare his teeth and snarl like the rabid dog he had been for years. It had been so much easier back then to push people away than it had been to take their hand.

She knew exactly how to push his buttons. No matter how much he loved her, Rey had this knack for digging deep into the core of his being only to surface successfully with his own fears and insecurities laid bare. It terrified him when they were still adversaries.

And it frightened him now, because she was right.

“See, now we’re arguing about this,” he countered, his voice smaller than he had wished. Acting on impulse—something he was no stranger to—he tightened his grip on the split piece of wood he was holding and he chucked it as far as he could into the lake. Rey flinched as it hit splashed on impact. He regretted it the moment the log hit the water.

Emotions that he didn’t realize he had bottled up bubbled up to the surface, and his voice cracked as he tried to add, “You know I can’t control what I dream about, so I would appreciate it if you would kindly refrain from shaming me for it.”

He put up little resistance as she took the remaining piece of wood from his hand and dropped it on the ground. 

“I’m not shaming you,” she said. “I want you to find me when you need me.”

A hand to the small of his back, Rey guided him back to the fallen tree where he sat down without any resistance. His will to fight evaporated as quickly as it has emerged. “The Force was never kind to me,” he tried to explain as the plainspoken confession bubbled to the surface. “It’s caused nothing but pain. I’ve hurt far too many people with it, so walking away from it was the the best decision I've ever made.”

“I know you’re scared,” she soothed as she once again straddled the tree trunk and waited for him to mirror her. He certainly didn’t want to fight with her, and when she offered a hand, he didn’t hesitate to lace his fingers with hers. “You and I--we both found balance in that last battle. You let the Force guide you, and it set you free.” 

“I can’t,” he said as he looked away.

“You’re not alone anymore, Ben,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper as she exposed one of his greatest fears. “I’m not going to let you fall. You’ve punished yourself long enough. Let the Force set you free again.”

She took his other hand as well, and the circuit between them was complete. He could already feel the energy sparking around them, through him.

“Just focus on me,” she instructed with all of the confidence of the teacher she was becoming, “and let the Force flow through you.”

Rey had always let the Force move through her and guide her. She never tried to bend it to her will like he had unsuccessfully tried to for decades. Perhaps that was why her use of it seemed to come so easily. She was its instrument, she once tried to explain. It wasn’t her weapon.

He closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath he didn’t realize he had been holding and immediately was surrounded by warmth. Little by little, he let down the barriers he had manage to build around his mind and slowly allowed himself to be enveloped in her light.

It was a stark contrast to every time Snoke had forced his way into his mind. That connection had always been nothing short of a painful invasion. The more he had resisted his former master—even as a child—the more it felt like a cold, brutal violation where he was never quite sure where he ended and his master began. He’d learned years before that it was easier to let Snoke to ransack his thoughts, and even then it had always left him with a blinding headache as though he was being torn apart from the inside.

“Breathe,” he heard her say in the distance, echoing his uncle’s simple invitation to tap into the Force’s ever-moving currents.

The waves gently lapped on the shore, and he focused on them as he allowed his mind to expand and the Force to move through him. They had become his constant companion, something that grounded him and kept him company when he felt all alone in the universe. They also raged with him on stormy days when his emotions matched the unrelenting gale outside, and the crushing weight of his unforgivable crimes was unbearable. Ben was connected to the lake, and it was there he would find the Force if he were to go looking for it.

Slowly his own Force signature as well as Rey’s came into focus. As he cast his mind out like the net he used in the cove, he was convinced it would return empty like a bad day of fishing. Maluhia had no other sentient beings, but suddenly life teemed all around him—not just on the island but in the vast waters surrounding it as well as from the distant shores he would never see. The Force was alive. Everything on the planet was woven together, existing in harmony. Time meant nothing, and he let the Force guide him as it revealed its mysteries. And in it, he found peace.

As he slipped into that greater sense of awareness that could only come from tapping into the Force, he heard Rey’s voice. “Now show me what you are trying to do today.”

Ben reached deep into the deep well of his memories, retrieving them from the deepest waters that he had somehow managed to keep hidden from Snoke. They were a lifeline to the light on even his darkest days. No matter how much he had once tried to extinguish them, they stubbornly refused to vanish. When he had hit rock bottom, and there was nowhere to go but climb back toward the light, those memories where the footlights that had guided his journey home. They were what defined him as Ben Organa Solo and never as Kylo Ren.

Those were the treasures he wanted to share with Rey ...

_ The world seems so huge, and everyone seems so much bigger than him. Ben’s hand is dwarfed by his mother’s as she leads him into the darkened temple. _

_ Lamps filled with sweet smelling oil flicker with glowing flames atop the central altar. There are only a handful of children in the temple, each dressed in a simple white robe just like the adults in the building. Several kneel and pray. Others cry as they light a lamp. A woman sings a funeral hymn quietly to herself in High Alderaani. _

_ His mother guides him to the center of the temple, and they kneel before the massive stone altar. She bows her head and turns her palms toward the heavens. He mimics her, and they pray to the Maker, who he’s not sure if he believes in. The Merciful Creator of all is just a myth, at least that’s what his secret friend had told him. _

We are the gods _ , he had told Ben in clandestine conversations. Those with the gift of the Force have the duty to have dominion over the weak, he had explained. _

_ But Ben doesn’t want to think about it right now. It’s a rare day that he has his mother all to himself. He doesn’t have to share her with the senators or ambassadors that keep her away for days on end, and he cherishes their time together. _

_ He doesn’t understand the High Alderaani that she speaks. He has a lifetime to master it, she has promised. It’s something she wants to teach him. _

_ His mother prays for the dead. She prays for her parents and her aunts, all lost in The Disaster. There’s no hiding the tears that gather in her lashes and slip silently down her cheeks. When she finishes her prayer, she reaches for a thin splinter of wood—a spillikin, she explains. She places the in his tiny hand and guides him to the waiting flame. Together they tip the piece of wood into flame the splinter starts to burn. _

_ “It’s time to light the lamp for our family, Ben,” she whispers in his ear as she steers his hand toward the lamp in front of them. “We need to make sure your grandmother and grandfather can find their way home to the World Beyond,” she adds with a delicate kiss to his cheek. _

_ Ben watches with silent wonder as they ignite the lamp’s wick and the flame springs to life, adding to the to the warm glow of the temple as his mother closes her eyes and his mother resumes her prayers ... _

Ben opened his eyes as Rey opened hers. The translation for the prayer his mother had recited flowed forth before he even realized what he was doing.

“May my flame guide you from untruth unto truth,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “From darkness, may you walk into light. From death, may you journey toward the immortality of the World Beyond.”

Ben’s breath hitched in his chest, and his larynx bobbed as he swallowed once. His mouth was dry and emotions raw. He knew if he tried to say any more, he would unravel into a mess on the beach.

Rey reached over and touched his cheek as his eyes prickled with unshed tears. “They’re not lost, Ben,” she said putting words to his anxiety.

“After everything I’ve done, I have to honor them,” he said. “But I don’t have a lamp, so a fire will have to suffice tonight, and next year, and the year after that.”

She didn’t answer but rather nodded to let him know that she understood that even this small gesture would never erase the guilt he carried with him every day.

The sun was beginning its journey toward the horizon of the lake, casting long beams of light that lit the shore with a golden late afternoon glow and made the water shine in a way that only occurred right before sunset.

“Kriff!” he cursed, realizing that hours had elapsed since they had first begun to meditate. Ben was on his feet gathering kindling from the scattered bits of driftwood. He still had so much to do before sunset. “How long were we at it?”

“I’m sorry,” she explained. “Time always seems to stand still when I go that deep.”

Ben kneeled down and wrapped his hand around a tuft of dead seagrass and pulled it out in one chunk from where it was anchored in the sand before placing it in the center of three larger sticks he had shaped into a triangle, their ends crisscrossing. Above that he started to stack the dried scraps of wood and thin lengths of kindling in a peak around it.

His father had taught him to build a fire when he was young. The lesson had stuck with him after all the years.  _ Start small, Ben,  _ he could still hear his da say.  _ Tinder first, then the kindling. The flame needs to be strong enough for the fuel logs to catch. _

When he was done, he leaned back on his haunches and watched as the sun began its final descent. The sky grew warm and transformed into a wash of oranges and reds. In his nearly three years on the island, he never grew tired of the simple beauty of a Maluhia sunset. Unobstructed by a megalopolis’ skyline, the waters reached out to the horizon to meet the sun as it bid its farewell for the night.

“It’s beautiful tonight,” Rey remarked.

“And this is where I say goodnight to you,” he replied pulling the elastic tie from his hair and securing it around his wrist. “You must be starving by now.”

Rey smiled. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll stick around until you’re ready to start your vigil. Are you still planning on going in the water?”

Ben answered with a nod as he tugged his sweater over his head. Purification, it was something he needed to do. He needed to wash away the countless sins that clung to him and chafed daily like an unseen hair shirt. Deep down he knew there was no magic in the waters and that his demons would not mystically vanish as he lowered himself into the lake. But he was still hopeful that the bracing cold that could only be found in the crystal-clear waves would cleanse him if only for the night.

“I need to clear my head,” he tried his best to explain his intentions before he sat down on the log and turned his attention to his boots and socks.

Rey pulled a towel from his rucksack and rested it on the log beside him. “You do realize that I’ve had cold drinks warmer than the lake, right?”

Ben allowed himself a brief smile. He stood and shrugged off his pants and base layer. “I’ll live,” he reassured.

Stubborn as ever, she held her ground. He certainly did not need a lifeguard watching from the beach, but it appeared that he had no choice in the matter.

“Then I’ll stick around to make sure you don’t drown.”

Goosebumps erupted on his skin. He couldn’t hide the fact that he was freezing even if he wanted to. Quickly he gathered up his discarded clothing and folded them in a neat little pile on top of the fallen tree.

“I’m not going in that deep, Rey,” he answered. “I very much doubt that I will drown.”

“Surely you’ve heard of cold shock,” she shot back. There was no winning with her. Rey had determined she was going to keep watch while he entered the lake, and there was no way he could convince his protector otherwise.

His teeth started to chatter, and he could feel the beginnings of shiver creep through his body. “You know,” he began, “for a kid raised on a hot, waterless rock of a planet, you seem to be an expert in the perils of cold water immersion.”

“Well, one of us has to be prepared when you decide to do something dangerous,” she quipped with a smile before rising to her feet and placing a kiss on the tip of his nose.

“Thank you,” he quietly replied.

“For what?”

“Keeping me company tonight,” he answered, “and for not talking me out of this.”

The warm sunset glow had begun to yield the cool whisper of green and blue as twilight approached and the sun slipped beneath the distant horizon. It was time to begin. There was no backing out now.

Naked as the day he was born, Ben cautiously waded into the water until the waves lapped against his shins. He wasn’t prepared for how painfully cold the water was, and he bit back a gasp as he focused his attention on his feet. The water was the clearest it would be all year. The sediments had not yet been stirred up by the torrential storms that would whip out of nowhere later in the spring. And it would be a few more months before the algae blooms would turn the water turbid for a handful of days during the hottest dog days of summer. He was certain that if he swam out to the deepest waters, he would be able to see clear to the bottom of the lake’s sandy floor.

By the time the water was waist-deep, the cold was excruciatingly unbearable and Ben began to shiver uncontrollably . He glanced to the shore for a fleeting second to catch a glimpse of Rey. His lifeguard was still there keeping constant watch over her one charge who foolishly stood in the water.

The first star of the evening blinked in the sky. Two more joined her a moment or so later. In the distance, he heard a coyote howl from the hills, its plaintive cry carrying across the surface of the lake. It was then that Ben closed his eyes and turned his palms toward the heavens before praying to a deity he was still quite certain did not exist.

“Merciful Maker,” he quietly pleaded, recalling the same invocation to begin the purification that he recalled his mother saying before they entered the sacred pool of the Alderaani temple, “may your water wash me clean, and may my thoughts be pure as my vigil begins.”

He knew the next step would hurt. Maybe that was the point, he thought to himself. There was no turning back now. Ben closed his eyes and leaned back into the water’s icy embrace, allowing all but his face to slip below the frigid surface as he floated on his back. The cold shock hit almost instantly, and he didn’t even try to stifle the uncontrollable gasp that escaped his lips. His heart stuttered for a beat or two, leaving that hollow uneasiness in its wake as it too reacted to the icy temperature. From the shore, he sensed Rey’s concern. He reached out through the Force to let her know that he was fine.

He didn’t focus on how his body revolted against the cold. Instead he waited for brief stillness that followed. After a minute or so, his breathing and heart rate began to slow, and it only then that he allowed his eyes to open. It was in that hushed silence that he found the clarity he was seeking, peaceful and vast like the heavens above him that emerged from the twilight, unobstructed by the blinding light pollution of the city planets he had been raised on.

Taking in a deep breath, he finally allowed himself to fully sink beneath the surface. The world was quiet, and he prayed that the he could be finally clean of all the unseen blood that still stained every inch of his body. He’d shed far too much in his lifetime, and it clung to him no matter how many times he tried to scrub it off.

But no amount of bathing would ever cleanse him of his father’s blood. He was covered in it.  It was ground into every pore, and it tainted him inside and out. It was the one stain that would never wash away as it coursed through his body each time his heart beat within his own chest. The only way he would ever be able to rid himself of it would be to gash open his veins and drain every last drop of it into the lake until the waves washed it away forever.

He had considered that option many times since he had been sentenced to this lonely exile. He’d come close twice, going as far as selecting a knife from the drawer and pressing it to his wrist only to prove each time that he was the coward he’d always been, incapable of completing the task.

_ Come back to me,  _ he felt her call from the shore.

He must’ve been projecting his thoughts again. There was no mistaking the sudden urgency to her request. Ben surfaced from the water with a gasp. His muscles felt rigid, unwilling to move. He was cold, so very cold. He wrapped his arms around himself, but they it did little to ward off the bone-aching chill. Forcing himself to take one step after another, he willed his frozen legs to work even as they screamed in protest. Everything hurt, but he kept his eyes focused on the shore and Rey waiting for him with a towel and dry clothing just like his mother had done so many years before in the temple.

His shivering approached uncontrollable rigors by the time he stepped out of the lake. Rey rushed to meet him as she wrapped the towel around him and started to scrub him down.

“You’re crazy, Ben Solo,” she said as she tried her best to scrub him dry. “You know your lips are blue, right?”

Ben nodded. He wasn’t going to deny either fact. It didn’t take long to tug his clothes back on. While he squeezed the water out of his hair, Rey retrieved the woolen cap from where he always kept it in his coat pocket. She waited for him to put the coat back on before pulling the cap over his head and covering his ears.

“You don’t want to lose all your heat from your head,” she warned with that old wives’ tale. For a moment, Rey reminded him of his own mother, protective and caring. “Now go start your fire before you die from hypothermia.”

He walked over to his rucksack and opened it. Letting out an exasperated sigh he said, “I left the lighter up at the house.”

Rey opened her palm and the brilliant blue of Force lightning crackled and sparked a few inches above her hand. “Do you want me to light it?” she asked as she closed her palm and the tiny bolt of energy vanished.

He was thankful that she didn’t suggest that he call the lightning. After all, they both had that ability, but there was no way he was willing to tap into that type of deadly energy. He was sure it would be like injecting an intoxicating and addictive opioid into his vein. He could already taste the rush of power such an act would bring, and he didn’t want to find himself anywhere on that slippery slope.

Instead he picked up a log that was jagged and frayed along its split edge. “I’ll do it,” he answered. “Just let me light the spillikin from you.”

“The what?”

Ben peeled a long, thin splinter about the length of his hand before tossing the log aside. Holding the wood fragment up he explained, “This is a spillikin. It’s a splinter of wood that’s used to light a candle or a lamp. Or in this case, a bonfire.”

Without saying a word, she nodded and opened her upraised palm again. The lightning sparked and danced above her hand in a controlled ball of energy no bigger than some of the smaller rocks that littered the beach. He placed his hand on her wrist while he used the other to tilt the tip of the spillikin into the blue arc of energy. A wisp of smoke and the end of the splinter erupted in flame.

“Thank you,” he said as she closed her palm and the electricity was no more.

He waited for the flame to grow steady enough before he kneeled down before the peaked stack he had built. Ben closed his eyes and again recited the prayer he recalled his mother using every year when she lit the family’s temple lamp. While the theology of the ritual felt as comfortable as wearing another man’s shoes, he had full faith in the prayer’s wish. He wanted to guide his parents home, wherever they were.

He fed the tip of the spillikin into the loose bundle of seagrass, and it ignited almost instantly. White smoke billowed up from the ball and the fire grew to where it started to envelop the kindling. Leaning in, Ben gently blew on the flame and watched as the fire began to take off and the burning wood started to crackle. Patience was as much of an ingredient as the tinder and kindling, he recalled from his father’s lessons on the finer art of fire building and waited until the entire peak was engulfed in flame before he added the first of the smaller fuel logs to sustain it. The heat was a welcomed gift, and slowly the chill began to dissipate from his frigid body.

He added a second, then a third log to the fire before he leaned back on his heels. “Go back to the house, Rey,” he instructed. “You’ve been out here long enough. Go warm up and have dinner.”

She kneeled down beside him so that they were eye level. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

They had been lovers for a little over a year, but the idea of not having to face everything alone was still a new concept he was learning to accept. Of course, he’d love for her to spend the night under the stars with him. But this was something he had to do alone.

“I’m positive,” he finally answered. “I’ll be fine.”

Rey leaned in and kissed him before touching her forehead against his. “I mean it, Ben, you’re not alone anymore.”

“I know,” he breathed in return and answered with a kiss of his own. There was comfort in her words after all of those years of no one there to hear his pleas for help. All he had to do was reach out and she would be there.

Gesturing to the path that lead back to the cottage with his head, he added, “I’ll see you in in the morning.”

She reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze before letting go. Pulling herself to a stand, she brushed the sand off her knees.

“If you need anything . . .” she began.

“Goodnight, Rey.”

Ben listened to her retreat back toward the cottage and was content to let himself be swallowed by the relative silence of the world around him. He’d never been one for small talk and much preferred to listen while others yammered on. The world had always been too loud and abrasive for him as a child--too many people, too many lights, and far too much noise. Growing up in the giant city states found on planets such as Chandrila—or worse, the singular megalopolis that was the planet city of Coruscant—he’d always felt alone in worlds counted in billions. The more noise they made, the more he had felt himself retreat inward. Perhaps that’s why his fall had been so easy. No one ever wanted to engage a monster.

Maybe that was why he’d come to love his island on Maluhia with its verdant forest, deep blue waters and infinite nights that stretched out as a blanket of inky black velvet covered in a multitude of shimmering stars. It was the opposite of everything he had known.

Perhaps if his parents had sent him here and not to his uncle he might not have descended into darkness. Perhaps Snoke would not have found him and he would have discovered this peace before he chose darkness and everything he touched turned to ash.

He stoked the fire with a thin log before feeding it to the flames. Sparks mixed with tiny flaming bits of ash ascended toward the heavens, each a flickering fragment of his hopes and prayers carried upward by the wind. He wanted desperately to believe in the small magic of the myths his mother had taught him, that those who had already departed would hear the prayers from the living and guide them on their journey.

As the fire grew in intensity, so did its heat. Somewhere along the way, the bone aching chill from his dip in the lake had finally faded away, and Ben pulled off the woolen cap so that the heat could dry his damp hair. The warmth felt good against his face. On a day of ascetic reflection, it was a welcome companion.

He wasn’t alone anymore, he reflected as Rey’s words stuck with him. With both of his parents gone and his uncle still on the other side of a bridge he felt was too large to mend, Rey was the closest thing he had to family. He felt her signature in the Force before he even realized what he was doing. It was strong as ever, a wash of light that warmed everything with its soft glow. She had already settled in for the night, but every once in a while, he would feel her steal a glance toward the lake. She may have agreed to head in for the night, but it hardly meant she had stopped looking out for him.

A light shone through the windows of the front room. Remembrance Day always had this way of making him more alone than ever. It was always a night in whichhis past transgressions were amplified. But there was something very comforting about the fact that she would be waiting for him on the other side of his vigil with that continued optimism when he struggled to find it and unwavering love when he found it impossible to offer the same to himself.

An owl hooted from somewhere nearby, and something small scurried across the forest floor not that far from the beach. Those were the sounds of home, Ben thought to himself. They were familiar and comforting.

A shooting star skirted low across the night sky, daring to dip below the lake’s surface before winking out.

_ Make a wish,  _ he recalled his mother saying a lifetime ago as they sat in a garden gazebo late one night on the property of an ambassador’s remote chateau on Naboo. He hadn’t thought about that night for decades. The child he had once been had believed in that magic and had filled with desperate wonder as he’d scrunched his eyes closed and wished for the impossible things only that only a little boy could wish for. He’d wished the voice in his head--the voice that had refused to call him Ben, that had always called him something else—would stop talking to him.

But that wish had never come true, and he’d learned a long time ago to stop wishing on burning stardust.

Yet he still found himself tracking the streak of light with the same wonder he did as a child. After all, his head was now blessedly quiet, and the voice had been silenced forever. Maybe wishes did come true, he thought to himself, but only on their own terms and when the time was right. Suddenly he wanted to believe in a child’s magic again and all of the hope it offered.

Briefly closing his eyes, Ben didn’t dare speak his wish out loud. That was a surefire way for it not to come true. Instead he focused on his wish, and like that little boy years before under a Naboo sky, he hoped the shooting star would grant his request.

The shooting star didn’t answer him, but the coyote he had heard before called again from its place in the hills. A duo of canids echoed in return only to be joined pups yapping to fill the chorus. It was spring, and it was time for rebirth. The seabirds would be nesting as soon as the greenery returned to the shore, and fawns would soon dot the meadow that was a few clicks from the house.

Content to let the island surround him with its gentle song, he added another log to the fire before settling back against the fallen tree. He closed his eyes and let Maluhia’s tranquility wash over him as the warmth from the fire surrounded him.

Ben didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he woke with a start. The bonfire had died down to a warm glow of embers, and the sky began to awake with the promise of a dawn that was close at hand.

He cursed to himself as he stood up to grab another log to revive the fire. He had failed at his watch, and that disgust with himself that was never quite that far away circled close yet again. A few years ago, he would have lashed out in a fit of anger, destroying anything that happened to be in the way. But now he just desperately wanted to make sure there would still be a fire burning at sunrise. He owed it to them to see this duty to completion. There would be time later to berate himself.

Two steps to the woodpile, and Ben stooped to pick up two logs when he heard a voice behind.

“Save the wood,” a woman’s voice called from behind him. It was a voice from his past, not yet weathered by war and time. “It’s almost dawn, Ben.”

The shimmering ephemeral image of his mother stood behind him in a hooded white gown he’d never seen her wear in life. She was young again, just as he had remembered her from his childhood. He’d felt her die from a galaxy away. It hadn’t been her death that had cut through him like a knife. It had been her sudden absence in the Force that had gutted him and left him hollow.

He let out a silent cry of surprise, his voice thick with emotion. “Amma, you’re here,” was all he managed to whisper.

“We’re never all that far away, sweetheart,” she answered with a smile.

His mother gestured to the fallen tree before sitting beside him. Of course, he didn’t believe in the magic of shooting stars, but the little boy he long thought was dead dared to hope.

“It was a nice fire, kid,” his father said as he emerged from the woods. He was the same translucent blue that his mother was.

“Thanks,” he answered before he tried to quip, “Believe it or not, some lessons actually stuck.”

But the smile that tried to creep across his face, the same smirk rooted in wistful mischief that he’d seen his father make so many times faded before it even had a chance to emerge. A breath hitched in his chest, and Ben turned away. His eyes flooded with unshed tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks.

He couldn’t face his father. Not now, not after what he’d done. He’d watched the light drain out of his father’s eyes as he had pulled his own lightsaber from his chest. He didn’t deserve his father’s kindness.

What started as a hiccup tore something open deep inside of him. The guilt and the pain that he’d somehow managed to push down and shove away so that life could be manageable came flooding up, and he was unable to staunch its flow. He slumped forward and buried his face in his hands. Ben’s shoulders shuddered as he silently began to sob.

His mother wasn’t solid, not in the sense that any living, breathing human would be, but he still felt her arms wrap around him and draw him to her. She was warm, and her Force signature wrapped around him a protective embrace.

When the tears no longer flowed, he felt his father’s hands wrap around both of his wrists. “Look at me, Ben,” his da called to him.

He opened his eyes to find his father kneeling in front of him. Like his mother, he too looked nothing like he’d last seen him. His da was young again, his hair dark and his eyes clear. He wasn’t the weary old man that had stood before him on that bridge with deep lines that grizzled his face and white stubble that made him look all the older.

“I’m sorry,” he managed to say through a constricted throat.

“I know,” his da gently answered. “I knew the moment you did it that you were.”

His father finally let go of his wrists and straightened himself to a stand. He was dressed like he always was—dark jacket and pants, that worn leather blaster holster strapped to his thigh. “I want you to know that before I found you, your mother asked me to bring you home,” he explained. “I’ve taken some truly stupid chances in my life, and the only reason I saw the next day was nothing short of pure luck. But when I saw you, I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“You should’ve turned and left when you had the chance,” Ben answered as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“Then you would’ve died for sure,” his father replied. “Chewie and I had enough explosives in that oscillator to blow it to kingdom come. I had one chance, and I took it. Now do I wish things had ended differently? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but my time was up, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. But I’d like to think that chance I took wasn’t for nothing.”

“You didn’t come home that day,” his mother added from beside him, “but you eventually did on your own terms, and that’s what matters.”

“But Da . . .”

“But Da nothing,” his father interrupted as he sat down beside him. “I forgave you a long time ago, and it’s time that you finally forgive yourself.”

His mother’s touch was always gentle, and he didn't pull away as she brushed the hair from his eyes. He’d spent years trying to forget such little things such as the way she touched his face or the delicate scent of her perfume. All it took was a simple gesture and he was a small child again, safe in her arms.

“Forgiving yourself doesn’t mean you have to forget what happened, Ben,” his mother said. “It just means you can finally let go and move forward.”

He didn’t pull away when his father placed his hand on his back, and it was hard to recall the last time the three of them had sat together like this. It was likely sometime when he was in primary school, before he’d been labeled  _ troubled _ , before his parents had starting arguing behind closed doors about him and how  _ they had to do something to help him.  _ Before his boring, normal life stopped feeling all that normal.

Before they had packed him up and shipped him to his uncle light years away.

“Rey’s right, kid,” his father said, leaning in until their heads were nearly touching. “You aren’t alone anymore.

By now the sky was a rosy blush. The sun was daring to peek over the hills on the center of the island. The first few songbirds that had already returned from their spring migration had started their morning song. Dawn was imminent. In his heart, Ben knew that the sunrise would likely mark the end of his parents’ visit, and he hoped and prayed that he could have just a few more minutes with them.

“The Council asked me for my input when they were contemplating your sentence,” his mother explained. “When it was obvious they weren’t going to execute you, they needed a place to send you so that it felt like they had done something and that Kylo Ren would never be a threat to anyone again.”

“Maluhia was my idea,” she continued as he looked at his feet. “It was about as far from the Core as you could get, and next to no one knew it even existed. The Republic got the justice it had sought, and you got your chance to finally live your life without anyone telling you who you had to be.”

His father gave his shoulder a squeeze before standing up. “I’m proud of the man you’re becoming here, Ben,” the older man said. “It’s who I’ve always hoped you would be.”

His mother leaned in and placed a kiss to his temple before rising and joining his da. “You have a family again, Ben,” his mother said smoothed out his hair with her palms. “Don’t let that opportunity slip through your fingers because you don’t feel you deserve it. Forgiveness is a powerful thing. Hopefully soon you will find a way to offer it to yourself.”

The first rays of sunlight peeked through the trees and danced on the surface of the water. All that remained of his bonfire were a few glowing embers surrounded by soot and ash. The vigil was over, and he knew it was time for his parents to leave.

Ben rose to stand beside his parents. Somewhere in all of those years lost, he’d grown taller than them both.

“Will I see you again?” he asked daring to hope.

“Of course you will,” his mother replied.

He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to commit every detail to memory.

“Hey, it’s not goodbye,” his father said with a smirk. It was what he had always said as Ben had begged him not to go when he was leaving for weeks on end.

“It’s see you soon,” Ben quietly replied, completing what he knew always came next.

His father pulled him into a hug just like he always did before he’d departed for long hauls. He put up no resistance as the older man’s spirit drew him closer with both arms wrapped around him just like he’d done so many years ago.

“I love you, Da,” he whispered into his father’s shoulder, not wanting to let go. Life would’ve been so much easier had he done this instead of engaging his lightsaber back on Starkiller.

“I know, Ben,” his father answered in reply. “I know.”

After a minute or so, his father pulled back and joined his mother at the water’s edge.

“Don’t go,” Ben begged, not ready for the moment to end. There was so much he still wanted to say to them, but he knew in his heart that they couldn’t stay.

His mother closed the distance between them and placed her hand over his heart. “We’ll always be here, Ben.”

He covered her hand with his and nodded. It was all he could do to answer. Anything more seemed impossible. Ben blinked, and the silent tears he didn’t even realize he had been holding in streaked down his cheeks. Without saying a word, his mother reached up and caressed his face, thumbing them away from his right cheek. His heart ached and it felt like he was losing her all over again.

“Goodbye, sweetheart,” she said, and she walked back over to his da.

Together they turned around and started to walk toward the water. His father wrapped his arm around his mother’s waist as they departed. Their images faded with each step they took until they were nearly transparent, their feet never sinking below the surface of the water. By the time they reached the middle of the bay, they turned briefly to wave their farewell. Ben raised his hand in return. Without saying a word, they continued their journey until their spirits vanished entirely, and the bay was bathed in the warm light of dawn.

Ben stood in silence for several minutes mesmerized by the waves that never ceased to lap at the shore. Lost in his thoughts, didn’t hear her approach as Rey emerged from the path and entered the rocky beach. It wasn’t until he heard her footprints crunch against the pebbles behind him that he realized he wasn’t the only one on the shore. He quickly scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, erasing the last remnants of his grief.

She likely knew he was a churning torrent of emotion, but said nothing. Instead, Rey eased up beside him and snaked an arm around his waist. With her other hand, she offered him a thermal mug of tea to help break his fast from the day before. It was just the way he liked it—not too hot, sweeter than he’d ever admit and with just splash of instacream that she had brought the last time she returned to Maluhia with supplies.

“How was your vigil?” she asked.

He took another sip of his tea, wrapped an arm around her shoulder and contemplated how he was going to answer. There was no way she didn’t feel his parents’ presence through the Force during their brief visit. In typical Rey fashion, she didn’t let on. He had so much he wanted to share with her, but in that moment, he wasn’t quite ready. In time, he’d tell her about how their spirits had appeared to charge him with the most daunting task of his life and how healing it had felt to embrace his father one last time. But for now, he just wanted to keep those moments private. When he was ready, he would share.

“Good,” he answered and he gazed out at the lake and the spot where the spirits had vanished.

Rey let out a small gasp of surprise that brought a smile to her face. She turned to face him and snatched the mug from his hand.

“Hey!” he said as he was caught off guard.

With her free hand, she grabbed his and brought his palm to her swelling abdomen. Their unborn daughter brushed against his fingertips as she kicked and turned from within her mother. She wasn’t due to be born for two more months, but Ben already knew her personality—feisty, persistent and filled with the Light, just like Rey.

“She missed you last night,” Rey said.

“I missed her, too,” he replied.

The baby kicked again in response to her father’s voice, and it brought a smile to his face. His mother was right; he had a family again, and they made him whole. Their daughter would be strong with the Force, they both were certain of this.

While Maluhia was his prison sentence, it wasn't his daughter’s. Yet Ben was hopeful that the hidden planet at the farthest edge of the galaxy would be enough to hide her from any influence that wanted to corrupt her. He would kill, if need be, and violate the terms of his stay of execution, to keep her safe. Snoke was long dead, but there was no knowing if there were others like him that would come for her, and he’d rather die than let someone steal her out from under his nose they way that Snoke slowly had done that with him.

And in that moment of perfect clarity he finally understood why his own father had risked everything to bring him home and why he’d faced death with sense of grace and acceptance. His da had been willing to do anything to save him just as he would do anything for his own unborn child.

“Hey,” Rey called softly, stirring him from his reverie, “where’d you go?”

Ben leaned in, retrieved his mug and gifted her with a small kiss before answering, “Just thinking.”

“Well, Just Thinking,” she joked as she turned him toward the forest path, “since you’re half-frozen and smell like campfire and lake, why don’t we head back to the house?”

“There’s nothing wrong with campfire and lake,” he yawned back. Fatigue creeped through him, and he was drained.

“Not if you want to crawl in bed,” she said with mock disgust. “I just changed the sheets this morning.”

Rey slung his rucksack over a shoulder before stooping over to pick up the plasma saw. As she headed toward the path, she said, “Grab the axe, sleepyhead. I’ll help you haul the logs back to the house later. I’ve got breakfast waiting for you.”

Food and some real sleep, both sounded wonderful. He retrieved his cap from where he had discarded it and tucked it into his coat pocket. The axe was still where he’d left it, embedded in a cross section of a cut up tree trunk. He tugged on the handle twice before the wood would release it.

And as he did so something small and metallic caught his eye beside his foot. He knelt down to get a better look as he set the axe and his mug on the pebbled ground. Picking it up, he turned the coin over in his hand. Tarnished to a dull bronze, it was older than any Standard Galactic credit chip in circulation, and it clearly predated the Imperial credits as well. On one side, it depicted governmental building. The other was embossed with the unmistakable image of Centerpoint Station.

It was a Corellian pentacredit coin.

Ben was certain it wasn’t there the day before. He’d spent hours staring at the ground as he had split wood. Surely he would’ve seen it glinting in the sun. There was no way it had fallen from one of his pockets. He didn’t have a credit to his name, and any that Rey had were the Galactic Standard. It must’ve been left behind by one of the house’s other exiled inhabitants a lifetime or two ago, he thought to himself. At any rate, the coin was intriguing enough, and it felt comforting in his hand as he ran his thumb over its face. There would be time to inspect it more closely later, his empty stomach reminded him. He tucked the coin in the front pocket of his trousers before retrieving his mug and axe and following Rey on the path back to home.

Curled fern fiddleheads peeked out from the loamy leaf litter that lined the path on both sides. Tree buds started to swell with the promise of a spring starting to awaken.  Bright bunches of yellow calthas bloomed in the marshy areas of the woods. They marked the time of year better than any calendar ever would.

Rey was already inside when he reached the house, her sandy boots drying on the stoop outside the door. While they both loved the lake, neither of them enjoyed the sand that seemed to get everywhere if they didn’t leave their shoes at the door. There was just enough space on the stone landing for his to stand next to hers. He leaned the axe against the small pump house near the door before pulling his boots off and placing them in their rightful place next to hers.

Ben was tired, no longer used to staying up for days on end. He was thankful that his day was no longer marked by a chrono somewhere in the dark vacuum of space that told him when to rise, when to eat and when to sleep. It was one of the gifts that Maluhia had given him—the freedom to rise with the sun, work until sunset, and then enjoy the evening as darkness spread over the island.

Yet the stolen moments of sleep on the beach the night before had not been nearly been enough. The fatigue crept all the way to his bones, and all he wanted to do was fill his belly then sleep for hours. He set his mug on the small kitchen table and shrugged off his coat, draping it over a chair. He’d hang it up after breakfast, he promised himself.

“Have a seat before you fall over,” Rey said as she carried two bowls of steaming porridge and joined him at the table.

“Thanks,” he said, taking a seat. He stirred at his porridge, mixing the dried fruit into the cooked grains. They ate in silence, and he managed to take a few bites before Rey set her spoon down.

“You’re scowling,” she declared. “What’s going on?”

“No, I’m not,” he answered. Well, maybe he was.

He dug into his pocket and set the pentacred coin on the table. “Did you drop this?” he added.

Rey picked up the coin and studied it before she shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before,” she said held it up. “It looks old.”

“It’s Corellian,” he answered as he reached for his tea. “Definitely predates the Galactic Civil War.”

Rey set the coin back on the table and swallowed another spoonful of porridge before asking, “Your father was from Corellia, wasn’t he?”

Ben closed his eyes with a sigh and nodded. Just like Rey to cut to the chase. “Yeah,” he quietly answered. “He was.”

“Back on Jakku, the Old Ones said that the dead would sometimes leave little trinkets behind for their loved ones,” she said. “Maybe your da left this for you.”

“Maybe.”

Rey finished her breakfast and rose from the table. She rinsed her bowl in the sink before heading toward the fresher. “You finish up,” she called over her shoulder as she entered to the bathroom. “I’ll run you a bath so you can warm up.”

“You don’t need to,” he called to the fresher. “I was just going to take a quick shower in the hydro before heading upstairs.”

“Too late!” she giggled, peeking her head out the door. He could already hear the sound of running water, and there was no way she would ever waste that many liters. “Don’t be stubborn. Let me do this for you. I’ll even wash your hair.”

The prospect brought a smile to his face. In all honesty, he loved to soak in the tub with her. They’d held each other and cried in it. They’d made love countless times in it, spilling more water on the floor than what remained in the tub. And they’d simply just enjoyed the silence and the gentle intimacy that the closeness of its confines offered more than the other two combined.

After his vigil, he was emotionally drained, and the thought of Rey doting on him because that is what she always did when he needed it most sounded like a wonderful way to decompress. They always managed to fit like two pieces of a puzzle.

“Fine,” he eventually answered. “Just none of that really flowery bath foam.”

Ben stretched before getting up from the table. He knew he couldn’t suppress the yawn that came next. The dishes would have to wait until he woke up. A quick trip to the sink with his bowl, and he circled back to hang his coat on its hook. He was about to head to the fresher and join Rey when the coin caught his eye again.

Picking it up, he walked over to the hearth in the living room. On the mantelpiece were the few ties he had to his family. The box he’d made from driftwood he’d found on the beach contained the handwritten letters from his mother that she had sent with Rey once he’d begun his life on Maluhia. On the other side of the ledge were toys from his childhood that he was amazed his mother had kept after all the years—a miniature X-wing and a well-loved, threadbare stuffed tooka cat that stared back at him with its absurdly cartoonish button eyes.

But what caught Ben’s attention was his mother’s twin-stoned ring she had worn since he was a young boy. When she had passed, Rey had brought it to him. It was what his mother had wanted, she had said. It was the only thing of hers that he possessed, and it was more precious than any of his meager belongings.

And as he stood there, he thought about Rey had said. Maybe the dead did leave things for their loved ones. If spirits could visit in the moments before dawn, anything was possible.

“Ben,” he heard Rey called from the refresher. “Water’s ready. Hurry up before it gets cold!”

“I’ll be right in,” he answered.

He ran his thumb over the coin’s surface one last time before setting it on the mantel beside his mother’s ring. It looked perfect in its new home.

“Thanks, Da,” he whispered quietly to himself.

Stealing a glance out the window, he peered at the path leading to the lake one more time before heading toward the bath.

Rey was right. He was not alone anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> _Maluhia: The Hawaiian word for Peace._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Mihi: The Hawaiian word for Repent_
> 
>  
> 
> I'm eventually planning a larger story about Ben's journey to Maluhia, yet somehow the later stories are being told in the Maluhiaverse before the first one. Hopefully I'll eventually get around to this! In the mean time, I have one other story in this universe that takes place the winter before Spillikin that is called [Solitude Interrupted](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9094393). If you liked Spillikin, please check out this other work!


End file.
